Author: VKM

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Whole Person Approach

The Whole Person Approach to Women’s Recovery

What Is a Whole Person Care Approach?

Women are more than their addictions. Any woman is secretly more resourceful and resilient, much larger in spirit than she may initially appear to be.

When treating someone with mental health problems, addictions, or trauma, it’s important to keep in mind the larger part of them that’s still well. Deep inside the most troubled, hurt person, there is a mysterious part that’s completely fine.

There is a wholeness inside each of us, a memory of who we are in our completeness, and, at the same time a prediction of who we can become. This part knows the way out of misery, back into health and wellness.

At Villa Kali Ma, we say we treat the whole woman, not only the disease. We have regard for the true self that waits only for her chance at full flowering. The whole person care approach takes into account that we are multidimensional, multifaceted beings with vast stores of hidden treasures inside us at all times.

What Are Some Important Factors in Treating the Whole Person in Recovery?

Treating a whole woman means shoring up strengths and fortifying what each woman has going for her. Even in the worst of times, a woman may still have her intelligence, her feelings, her courage, her humor, her creative inklings.

Many times, there may be some positive resources inside her home environment, her work, and her family relationships. These are all assets that can help her face what must be faced to get better.

We consider the context of a person, including different life roles, where she’s from, what she eats, what her body has to say, and what her moral values are.

Taking the larger view of a person’s wholeness, we can see patterns of connection, where problems truly originate.  The threads of disease entangle in multiple areas of our lives – our sexuality, our love relationships, our parenting, our culture.

A woman’s inner wholeness is an incredible resource, touching on what makes her unique as well as what she shares with all others.

What Are Co-occurring Disorders in Addiction?

In the field of mental health, the term co-occurring disorders is used to describe the case when we are suffering from more than one kind of trouble.

Mental health struggles often go hand in hand with addiction. When living in your skin is already a challenge, the sticky webbing of addiction can take root quite easily, promising relief.

Conversely, the habit of addiction leaves a residue of mental health troubles in its wake. States of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem are the legacy of any substance.

What Are the Elements of Treating the Whole Person in Recovery?

Treating the whole person in recovery means activating different facets of a person’s larger self as a recovery resource. It also means looking to different parts of a person’s life, such as living environment, work life, marriages, and family relationships, for hidden strengths and clues to how to get better.

Better Thoughts

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a modality we use at Villa Kali Ma to address the thoughts we think and the worldviews we hold. Looking into the vast resources of mind and thought, we find a powerful portal into change. Negative, distorted thoughts create misery, but truthful, loving thoughts create health.


Healing the Nervous System

EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Parts Work are modalities that address the deep biological imprints left by trauma. We use these at Villa Kali Ma to help women free themselves from the impacts of past events.


Learning to Relate

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy helps women learn to have softer, more manageable experiences of their emotions. It helps us regulate and express our wants and needs in relationships. Through DBT, Villa Kali Ma helps women experience freedom from drama while staying richly engaged with feelings.


Community Is the Cure

12-step programs and other recovery community involvement help women experience being valuable and connected, worthy of receiving the support they need. Over time, these communities help women realize that they are worthy and wise enough to help others recover, as well, which provides life with greater meaning.

How Does Treating the Whole Person Work in Terms of Treatment?

At the beginning of whole-person treatment, it’s important to prioritize the physical body. Detoxifying from addictive substances is best done in the context of basic safety and supervision by professionals. Villa Kali Ma provides a secure and comfortable environment for a woman to first find and stabilize her sober state.

Once basic sobriety has been established, it’s important to begin with healing the mind, emotions, and physical body of toxic beliefs, painful emotions, and destructive habits. This stage may involve the removal of some aspects (toxic relationship patterns, old negative beliefs, etc), as well as the installation of new ideas and ways of thinking about life (better thoughts about oneself, forgiveness, and moving on, for example).

Before leaving a residential treatment facility, it’s important also to address all aspects of practical life that surround a woman’s experience, things like work life, family of origin relationships, marriages, and parenting topics. Home environment, exposures, and triggers all need to be looked at very pragmatically to come up with a useful plan for living.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist Women With the Whole Person Approach to Recovery

Villa Kali Ma is a healing center that takes a multimodal, open-minded approach to healing each woman as an individual. We treat the woman herself and all that is within and around her.

Recovery is ultimately about joy. There is a life after addiction, mental illness, and trauma. That life is a good one – rich, creative, connected, and meaningful.

Each woman’s life is unique, and won’t be the same as anyone else’s. Even though we have many things in common, we are each divine and irreplaceable in this world. Finding the special story that is ours only to love and to keep close to our hearts is the gift of all the work we do in treatment.

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National Adhd Awareness Month

National ADHD Awareness Month

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we feel passionately that every woman has a right to peace of mind, body, and soul. To be distracted, disturbed, and restless is a form of misery that haunts too many of us!

Not only is it painful to live in a state of disarray and disorder, but our inattention to our inside depths robs us of the chance to glimpse the perfect beauty inside us. Only in the stillness of peace are we able to catch sight of the crystalline design that lies dormant inside our hearts!

We are unique and unrepeatable, so if we never get to activate what lies within us, it is a missed opportunity of the greatest proportions. The good news is, that we always have the chance to try again to set aside all that would lead us away from ourselves. Let’s do our best to return to the simple joy of being that awaits us like a treasure at the end of a long hunt!

Inattention, Hyperactivity, and Impulsivity

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, is a form of suffering that afflicts more and more people, according to the meteoric rise in diagnoses and prescriptions for ADHD-related medications. October is designated ADHD Awareness Month, a yearly occasion to reflect on the meaning of this particular form of soul trouble.

In the United States, ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorders, especially among children. The symptoms are summed up in the archetype of the hyper, distracted, un-subduable child, or the contemporary adult who struggles to focus, follow through on tasks, and sit still for long periods.

ADHD is diagnosed when a specific profile of behavior is observed in a person, which includes three key factors: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Inattention is the diagnostic label for when a person finds it hard to focus and follow instructions. Hyperactivity is the label for a condition of needing to move constantly in situations where it is inappropriate. Impulsivity is the label given to a person who has trouble suppressing instincts and urges to act. Inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity all in the same person is the diagnostic profile of ADHD.

Why is National ADHD Awareness Month Important?

Many of us can relate to the description above, of struggling to focus and sit still. That’s because as a collective, we are witnessing a serious loss of the ability to experience basic self-discipline and the benefits of concentration and focus.

This national loss of the ability to concentrate and pay attention is due to many factors and may include everything from the impacts of social media, changes to the education system, and what we’re eating. Toxic exposures from agricultural and manufacturing practices and other factors contributing to poor physical health and neurology have been theorized to play a significant role.

It’s important to understand that even if you relate strongly to the symptoms of ADHD, you may not have a clinical case. To be diagnosed clinically with ADHD, it is required that the symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity represent a significant disruption to one’s ability to perform basic tasks required for life.

It is widespread to find it somewhat challenging to focus and complete tasks, and there are many reasons besides ADHD which can explain why you may have problems with poor focus and impulsivity.

The reason it’s important to be mindful of whether or not you qualify for an ADHD diagnosis is that sometimes people take a diagnosis to mean that they are in a permanent or incurable state, or identify with their diagnosis in a way that doesn’t serve them (at least, that’s happened to some of us at Villa Kali Ma!).  If we start to think of our diagnosis as a part of who we are, or even just a fixed state, we may form attachments to being sick that limit ourselves unnecessarily.

The Push to Medicate ADHD Symptoms

ADHD diagnoses are usually paired with a prescription for a stimulant like Ritalin. Stimulants represent the risk of addiction and change brain chemistry, so introducing them to your own or your child’s nervous system is something to be carefully considered.

More and more voices within the medical and psychiatric community have raised questions about the narrative surrounding the supposed efficacy of stimulant medications, and these voices say that short-term benefits are followed by long-term detrimental outcomes. A good reference if this is news for you may be this overview from Mad in America:

Discomfort due to struggles with attention is widespread, we are not alone in this trouble. It is in our interest to consider the many holistic paths to recovery of our ability to have attention, focus, peace, and stillness, before necessarily assuming that we have a disease that can only be treated, not cured.

That said, each woman should find out for herself and walk her path! No judgment or doom is casting if you do feel you have clinical ADHD, nor if you do decide that medication is the path for you. You are allowed to try anything and find out for yourself, so please follow your own heart. Everyone deserves help and needs to discern for themselves, what’s best and right for them.

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we would define our support for National ADHD Awareness Month as helping to spread and uphold compassionate awareness of the suffering and challenges related to the widespread phenomenon clinicians call ADHD, including the many possible interpretations of why ADHD continues to sweep through the nation at such alarming rates.

It’s important to look out for and support people who are bearing the impacts of ADHD topics, such as children, parents, and teachers. Millions of people in the US are affected by the negative effects of ADHD, and loving, informed awareness of their suffering is important. Let’s not leave people alone with this burden.

How to Observe National Awareness Month

How might you personally help with the topic of ADHD?

If you’re motivated to help shine a light on the complexities of this topic, then your loving intentions to help share awareness will guide you.

Here are our ideas:

1. Watch the numbers and the narrative

Be aware of the rising numbers of diagnoses and prescriptions and ponder in your heart what that means to you. Why is ADHD on the rise? Are we getting better as a nation? If not, why not? What do you think a solution could be? How is the situation being framed and how is the narrative being told to us? What is the story about ADHD? What do you personally make of it all?

2. Start Dialogues

At Villa Kali Ma, we are big believers in considering different angles and exploring personal points of view. We live in a world of multiple truths coexisting, and each person’s puzzle piece helps make the biggest picture more clear.

By engaging curiously and compassionately with the topic, you can help spark awareness and spread compassionate awareness among people in a situation to make changes that can help humanity.

It’s especially helpful to talk with people who represent an opposite point of view from your own. If you think ADHD is being overdiagnosed, talk with someone who believes it is underdiagnosed. If you think stimulant medications are bad for children, talk to someone who has a personal positive story of recovery and benefit long term. On the other side, if you’re sure that the medical path is the only way forward, engage with people who have healed their ADHD with yoga. And so on!


3. Share your Story

If you have personal experiences with symptoms or even a clinical diagnosis of ADHD, and/or experiences with stimulant medication, share your story! For other people who suffer from the same struggles, but are isolated, hearing even one person’s true, first-person narrative can be all the difference needed to feel less suffering around it.

For humanity to recover and face the many burdens we’re up against, we need to be less isolated and less ashamed of whatever it is we’re honestly grappling with. We can be the first people to reduce shame and isolation around us just by being open about the unique details of our own experiences.


4. Educate Yourself

In the interest of forming your own opinion based on what has truth resonances for you, we suggest perusing both the information put forth by entities like ADHD Awareness Month, as well as by people who explore alternative ways of understanding and healing the impactful presence of ADHD symptoms in our world, such as Robert Whitaker and those exploring the benefits of functional medicine approaches to psychiatry, such James Greenblatt. More information will never hurt the truth.


5. Practice Your Peace of Mind Skills

Finally, let’s not forget that ancient wisdom teachings from cultures around the globe have offered a solution to the problem of scattered monkey minds and impulsive behaviors for thousands of years already – meditating!

Meditating is a little bit hard, I know, it’s true (if you resonate, you may want to read my post on meditation tips for people who don’t like meditating).

But meditation is hard in that way that it’s hard to run when you’re out of shape – the solution is just to do it. May we all be blessed with the humility to start where we are! If we can only meditate for five minutes, let us do that. If we can find peace through listening to classical music or after going for a run, let’s do that! Whatever works!

If we actively work on our peace skills from wherever we’re at, we are actively contributing to healing the imbalance of unruly, uncontained attention that is hurting so many of us and our loved ones. Sometimes the best thing we can do is hold a peaceful space for others who can’t do that right now.

Thanks for reading!

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8760933/

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8 limbs of yoga

What Is the Purpose of the 8 Limbs of Yoga

What Does Yoga Mean?

The word yoga represents the concept of union. From the ancient, beautiful mother-language Sankskrit, the word is related linguistically to our contemporary word “yoke”, which means to unite together, as when we yoke a cart to a horse.

Yoga is for uniting the ordinary level of consciousness with superconscious domains, and ultimately with the Cosmic Source Self, who dwells in all. The practices of yoga are offered to humanity as a viable way to unite with our own most precious sovereign divine nature.

Our own divinity is available to all as an incredible resource of love, creativity, intelligence, and connection, if we choose to develop a relationship with it. Through yoga, we may find our way back to our mysterious true source, and reunify with our own best and highest nature.

Reuniting with the best of what’s dormant inside human potential requires disentangling from that which is negative for us. The force of habit which binds and chains us to patterns and shady expressions of our nature which we do not wish to continue, is dissolved through practices of yoga.

Whether you think of yoga as liberating you from bonds and chains, or whether you think of it as joining you in a chosen union with your higher better nature, either way, yoga is a rigorous, loving practice that has humanity’s best interest at heart. It is accessible to all of us to be used for healing purposes and positive intentions.

What Is the 8 Fold Path Leading to Liberation?

Yoga is extensively codified and systematized, an all-encompassing path for healing body, emotions, mind, and spirit. It represents a holistic and reliable method for curing all manner of human ills.

According to the Yoga Sutras, (books of knowledge recording the best ways to practice), yoga can be conceptualized as having 8 limbs, corresponding to the 8 fold path of liberation.

If you practice yoga, you may already be aware of the word ashtanga, as there is a kind of yoga called ashtanga yoga. What Ashtanga means literally is “eight limbs”. These eight limbs are:

  1. Yama – moral disciplines and restrictions, rules and vows
  2. Niyama – positive duties and observances
  3. Asana – posture
  4. Pranayama – breathing practices and techniques
  5. Pratyahara – withdrawal from the world of the outer senses
  6. Dharana – concentration, focus
Yama - Moral Discipline, Restrictions, and Vows

When embarking on the path of yoga, we make vows of intention that we will abstain from destructive behaviors. We abstain from that which creates harm in a kind of do-unto-others spirit, as a way of not hurting others but also because we understand that when we hurt others we create karma.

The root a- in Sanskrit means non (as it often does in English). So some of the words indicate a sense of non-doing, or refraining from.

Ahimsa means non-violence, or harmlessness, in essence, to refrain from hurting others. Satya means to maintain honesty and truthfulness. Asteya translates to non-stealing or respect of other’s possessions and sovereignty. Brahmacharya refers to the right use of our personal energy, and aparigraha means generosity, or non-greed.

Yoga practiced without ethics and integrity will bring little benefit. Therefore it is encouraged to make personalized vows and commitments that we follow the golden rule in our lives, treating others with the kindness and regard with which we ourselves want to be treated.


Niyama - Positive Duties and Observances

Niyama, the second limb of the liberation and union path, refers to positive actions and practices we take:

Saucha (cleanliness), santosha (maintaining a satisfied, happy state of mind, also called contentment), tapas (discipline, or transmuting of our desires through non-indulgence in negative habits and impulses), svadhyaya (self-reflection and study of spiritual ideas and written texts), and isvararpanidaha (surrender to a positive higher power we recognize to be better than our own ego mind and its willful desires).

Niyamas build our character, turning us into the people we really mean to be in our hearts and highest wishes.

Asanas - Meditation Posture

The physical postures of yoga are called asanas, (as in bal-asana, or child’s pose). In the 8 fold path of yoga, the third limb, called Asana, refers to one important pose, the pose you take for the practice of meditation, which is a seated pose.

There are different kinds of poses for meditating, such as lotus pose or hero’s pose, but the most important feature of this pose is that it is a posture the meditator can comfortably sustain. Therefore it’s not better or worse to sit in lotus pose or hero pose, rather the importance is what works for each meditator.

A good seated pose will feel that you are able to stay seated like that without constantly being mentally pulled into sensations of pain or restlessness induced by the discomfort of the position. The position should be supportive, not a hindrance.


Pranayama - Breathing Practices

Prana refers to vital life force energy or our source of aliveness. It means the subtle essence that flows through all living forms.

Prana is so intimately connected with breath, that these are often interchanged to mean the same thing. As we know, all of the human form is affected by the flow of breath and requires unobstructed, free-moving healthy breath to thrive.

Pranayama breathing practices artfully affect the breath in a way that optimally flows throughout the human form. Thus we restore maximum vitality, or life force, throughout all portions and systems of the body.

Flow of breath intimately affects thoughts, emotions, and moods. Everything about human consciousness relies on the flow of vital life force energy, and working with the breath is a powerful way to ensure this vital life force stays fresh in us.


Pratyahara - Withdrawal From Outer Senses

Pratyahara means to withdraw or pull away from the outer sense experiences. In other words, to go within.

Rather than switching off the senses, it is more a question of tuning into the inner world and subtler inner sensations. This is why we seek out a quiet, non-stimulating environment for our meditation so that it is easier to give less our attention to what may arise in our hearing, sight, and other senses.

It is not that outer world senses are bad or wrong, just that what we seek to strengthen is our inner life, our interiority. Although oneness infuses all forms, we do not find unity by pursuing something outside of us, but rather by going into ourselves and discovering the in-dwelling source nature we already all, have and merging with that.

Once we feel our unity with the source we are, it is also easier to recognize it in everyone else, too.

So we practice pulling inward so that we are looking in the right place for our own personal path to source.

Dharana - Concentration

Yoga offers multiple ways to practice our ability to sustain our focus on one thing without wandering off in our minds. As we develop this ability we may use visualizations, focusing on the breath, or other kinds of mindfulness practices to practice the pure ability to stay concentrated without dissipating our attention.


Dhyana - Absorption Into Meditation

Dhyana is the state that can come upon us when we have been practicing our ability to go within and stay there with our attention. Dhyana is a gently pleasurable state, similar to creative absorption, a flow state similar to being “in the zone”.

Dhyana is not so much a practice that we directly “do” as much as a state we train to be able to go into. Dhyana requires some experience settling in, getting past boredom and agitation, refraining from following thoughts or focusing on outer stimuli, and learning to get absorbed into the healing, peaceful, and spacious mind in the background of our own experience.

Samadhi - Bliss

Samadhi means bliss, or enlightenment. This is the fruit we plant by practicing the other seven limbs of yoga.

Samadhi is a kind of quiet joy that arises not from escaping the difficulties of human experience, but rather from waking up from inside them and finding one is able to be in a quite natural and organic bliss state in spite of it all.

Villa Kali Ma Offers Yoga to Assist You in Connecting With Your Inner Self

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we believe steadfastly in the relevance and power of yoga to heal Western women’s ills. Especially when used in combination with cutting edge treatments that can deal with the psychological trauma, toxicity from chemical exposures, severe nutritional deficits, mental illness, and other factors that affect us today.

At Villa Kali Ma, we seek to unite the best of the West with a strong foundation in the insights of yoga and other ancient traditions of healing.

Our founder Kay experienced her relief from the nightmares of addiction in large part through the path of yoga and holds this method of waking up from the mind spells of addiction dear to her heart.

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Four paths of yoga

The Four Paths of Yoga

Even though we frequently fall for the illusion that happiness comes from outside of us, the truth is, that happiness is generated by our own perception.

How we choose to think about experiences we are having vastly impacts how we feel about those same events. At subtler levels, tiny perceptual impressions, interpretations, decisions, and conclusions we reached in formative moments of our lives give rise to qualities of experience now.

Just because we are self-creating most of our suffering doesn’t mean we don’t deserve superabundant love, compassion, and patient help to change the ancient, deep habits that perpetuate our pain.

According to the yogic way of looking at the world, the most basic cause of suffering is our disconnection from the rest of life and from our own deep source.

The word yogis gave to this experience is avidyā, which means “forgetting”. We forget that we belong to all of life, that we are life’s kin. Even more relevant than that mental forgetting, perhaps, is the fact that we don’t feel loved, connected, valued, or at one with our own Source.

Instead, we experience ourselves as cut off, separate, and individualized. The confused ego mind, and all its many misguided defenses, that we originally said yes to as a way to shield ourselves from further pain and trauma when we’re young, keeps us locked away from our own essence. From that state of being parted mentally from our essence, we engage in all kinds of behaviors and thoughts that set us on the wrong track (if our goal is happiness).

Yogic philosophy can help us diagnose what’s going on in our minds that is giving rise to suffering. Yoga identifies three important mental misunderstandings, or bad habits, which mislead most of us on the daily.

What Are the 3 Impurities of the Mind?

According to the ancient scriptures of yoga, the Vedanta, three main mental problems create the condition of deep forgetting of the reality that we are all one with oneness. These are selfishness, outward focus, and not recognizing the source of life in form.

Mala, or selfishness, refers to pursuing benefits to ourselves as an individual; as our primary goal in life. Selfishness is a hard word for us in the West, because sometimes it is used to coax us out of our boundaries, and that’s not the true meaning here. (And many women need to be more selfish, in the sense of having more regard and care for their own lives and selves).

Yoga doesn’t say we have to give up our own beloved selves, nor are we to punish or neglect ourselves (after all, we’re part of life too) – the idea of turning on the self and sacrificing it overly is more of a Western legacy. All of that said, there is a deep truth in the fact that when we think only of ourselves, that strengthens the ego, and fortifies the walls of separation.

Vikshepa refers to our tendency to get caught up in externals, thinking about outer events and allowing the mind to be incessantly distracted by sensory stimuli.

Avavana describes how we don’t recognize our own true self, or source, in the world around us nor within us. We have a tendency to think that there are parts of creation which are not-God, (and not-Me), but at deeper levels that just isn’t true at all.

We exist in and as a sea of unity, like an ocean of consciousness that changes shapes but is always one with itself. Even though it appears quite convincingly on the surface that we are separate individual streams of consciousness, that is only relatively true, not absolutely so.

The purpose of practicing yoga is to purify us of these three bad habits. For our Western audience, again a reminder that this isn’t actually a moral issue, nor is this about being a good doggie or a bad doggie.  It doesn’t make us better people if we practice yoga or if we remember that all life is one with all of life. It only means that we are more likely to be happy.

Yoga offers four main paths to return to our unity with God, or the oneness we all are.

The 4 Paths of Yoga

Bhakti Yoga - The Path of Devotion

Bhakti yoga is a path of love. Bhakti is a heart-based way to God and involves full and total surrender and dedication to lovingly revere the divine in everybody and everything. The bhakti yoga way purifies us through the power of love, as we give our love to the divine essence inside of anybody and anything we come across. Through emphasizing that God is in all, and the guidance that we generously love all as God, the illusions of boundaries between us and God (and other people, plants, animals, as well as the physical world) naturally fall away as we love omni-directionally.


Karma Yoga - The Path of Service

The path of karma yoga emphasizes service to others, and the performance of loving, positive actions without attachment to outcome. That means we help people whether they are grateful for our help, whether they see what we are doing for them, or not.
When performing pure service without any expectation of personal gain over time, we eventually experience oneness. The pesky over-distinction between self and other dissolves. The illusions of separation between the well-being of ourselves and the well-being of another disappear, and we experience oneness.


JñāNa Yoga - The Path of Mind and Will

The path of jñāna yoga takes the route of logic. Jñāna engages our powers of reasoning to help the mind discover its own source as residing inside. Through careful, non-emotional examination of the thoughts that arise in our minds, their illusory nature is revealed and we see past them into the core of what’s true in us.


RāJa Yoga - The Path of Meditation

The path of rāja yoga targets our powers of attention, training them away from the restlessness and discontentment of outward focus and back in towards our own essence (where our own lovely divinity awaits our recognition).
Rāja yoga inspired most yoga classes available in the West and works well as a structured path that trains attention and focus to be still enough that we see the truth inside.

Villa Kali Ma Offers Yoga to Help With Mental Health

Villa Kali Ma embraces the liberating, healing powers of these four intertwining yoga paths to help women in the West wake up from their mental emotional pain, including the pain of addiction.

Our personal experiences with yoga, and our gratitude for the wisdom offered by these ancient traditions, infuse all offerings we create and steward for an ever-growing community of recovering women. Come see for yourself!

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Sober Summer Tips

Sober Summer Tips

As we wind down the summer and look forward into the holidays, we can see we’re heading into a season of gatherings.

Office parties, family fêtes, holiday get togethers, old friends and group dynamics can all be rough to tolerate when we’re first stabilizing our lives. How can we keep our commitments to sobriety in the face of so many social events and festivities?

Tips on How to Protect Your Sobriety Among Friends and Family This Season

1. Set Your Intentions

It is enormously powerful to set intent. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Fortify your will by reminding yourself what you choose to create with your one precious life.

Journal on the following questions:

What are my intentions with respect to sobriety this season?

If these are my intentions, which behaviors match those intentions?

If someone else had these same intentions, how would they behave?

What do I need to do and refrain from doing, in order to experience the flowering of these intentions?

What behaviors and actions follow logically from these intentions?


2. Make a Plan of Action

Planning is a vital tool for those of us who have struggled in the past to hold steady to our real intentions and values. Planning protects us from unexpected free time, which in the beginning of sobriety is an opening for past destructive habits to pop in out of nowhere.

Planning follows from getting serious about your intentions. If you really intend something, the next natural step is to begin planning, coordinating and putting things in motion, talking to relevant people and thinking about resources.

With as much self-love as you can, create a detailed plan for yourself, that represents an ideal path for staying sober and matches your true highest intentions. Look out for areas of contradiction between what your best and highest good wants and what shadowy sides of you may want.

Design the plan that reasonably leads to the results you intend.


3. When in Doubt, Leave It Out

When your genuine intention is to stay sober, you might not attend certain events. In early sobriety we need to actively avoid some people and places if it’s not strictly necessary to be there, even if it’s socially uncomfortable to turn down an invitation.

If you get a quaky feeling about a situation, or if your inner addict seems a little too excited about this particular event or person, skip it this time. We have to be lovingly honest with ourselves about our true motivations and whether what is drawing us to something is a healthy urge or not.

When you’re not sure how to handle specific scenarios and what feel like obligations you can’t refuse, get help from who have walked this path ahead of you for how you could attend but still hold true to your real, best highest intentions.


4. Bring Your Plan to Life by Making a Schedule

Turn your plan into a schedule, by putting activities and positive actions you will take on the calendar.

Choosing specific times and dates for your positive activities often makes the inner addict squirrelly. That tells you something about how the inner addict may have been hoping to use some moment of undefined purpose to take you by surprise and ambush you.

To avoid giving the addict any room to work with, shoot for a realistic and sustainable schedule that balances positive activities and the necessities of work life with safely scheduled rest and down time. Of course life will be life, but when plan for what we want to experience, we are so much more likely to experience that.

It is recommended that you map out a 1-3 month projected schedule. See where you can already decide in advance to commit to a consistent rhythm of 12 step meetings, treatment aftercare programming, therapy, coffee dates with sober friends and mentors, exercise, time with pets and nature, sober social events, and nourishing creative activities or hobbies.

Make your calendar visible, even decorated. You can involve your inner child in this project – unicorn stickers and drawings of hearts and flowers go a long way. Making it a creative project is fun and also helps your powerful visual mind can grab a hold of your change intentions and start turning them into reality.


5. Make a Special Plan For Specific Events

As your calendar helps you see upcoming social and family gatherings ahead of time, pair each potentially challenging scenario with a thick, juicy set of tools and preparations you can and will use. Put your tools and events plan in writing as well, and share it with a positive person for extra accountability.

Plan to sandwich any contact with non-sobriety related settings and people (such as weddings, or other places where alcohol will definitely be in circulation) with sobriety-associated settings and people.

For example, if you are attending a wedding in a city you’ve never been to, you can already look up and commit to a 12 step meeting to attend that morning in that location. Schedule an evening call with a sponsor or therapist for the day of the event, so that you will have a pre-arranged reason to step away from the event. A private call with a sober person is a lifesaver, as it takes you out of the wedding context for a brief reorientation to your true intentions.


6. Carry a List of On-The-Spot Tools That Work

Have a list of on-the-spot tools you can use with you at all times. Things like “do square breathing for five minutes” (four counts of in-breath, four counts of holding the in-breath in, four counts of out-breath, four counts before starting the next in-breath), yoga poses that work to calm you down in an instant (such as forward bends that stretch out adrenals and release stress), hacks like “walk briskly around the block for at least ten minutes” and “re-read this list of top ten reasons why you personally want to be sober”, can be true miracles in the moment

Villa Kali Ma Helps Women Stay Sober Year Round

If you’re struggling to be and stay sober, Villa Kali Ma welcomes you here, we’ll use our cutting edge holistic treatment program to help you figure it out for good. We all need help to get and stay sober, every day of the year.  

Categories
Alcohol Use and Anxiety

Is My Alcohol Use Contributing to My Anxiety?

Does Alcohol Cause Anxiety?

Yes.

Although women often turn to alcohol to help them ease pre-existing anxiety, alcohol worsens our anxiety over time. Alcohol has dampening effects on the nervous system that make it seem as though it helps in the moment to aid with anxiety, but actually makes anxiety more serious of a problem once the intoxication wears off.

Anxiety is a symptom of alcohol withdrawal, as well, so using alcohol directly increases anxiety through the withdrawal mechanism. Also, alcohol doesn’t erase or heal underlying anxiety or its triggers.

Understanding the Impact of Alcohol Use and Abuse

Alcohol use has a tendency to lead towards greater use and abuse of the substance. That’s because alcohol is highly habit forming, and because it creates impacts in the brain and body that then further impel a person towards drinking just to counteract these unpleasant sensations.

Whatever a woman’s original reasons for relying on alcohol, these reasons get worse over time through the use of alcohol itself. Anecdotally, using alcohol to treat one’s anxiety or manage symptoms of anxiety is like using gasoline to put out a fire.

More About the Impact of Alcohol

Alcohol affects the brain and body through many pathways, leading to atrophy of the body due to alcohol’s toxicity, as well as to the condition of chemical addiction. Some brain imaging studies suggest permanent changes in the brain to have occurred through chronic alcohol abuse.

In addition to significant detrimental health effects of alcohol, for example to the blood, brain and liver, alcohol changes a woman’s personality and brings out sides of her nature which are more selfish, inconsiderate and emotionally toxic, as the spirit of addiction takes over and replaces her real self.

What Is the Relationship Between Alcohol and Panic Attacks?

Some people may turn to alcohol to cope with panic attacks, because of alcohol’s sedative effects. However, alcohol worsens panic in the mid to long term, because of the ways that alcohol damages the brain and nervous system.

In general, alcohol interferes with the ability to heal the underlying causes of panic attacks. As people progress in the stages of addiction, they are more likely to experience panic attacks. Panic attacks are a common experience during alcohol withdrawal as well, and are extremely uncomfortable to experience.

If you suffer from panic attacks, alcohol is not the friend it can seem to be in the moment. A significant number of people who come for help reporting that they are having panic attacks turn out to be having them because of their excessive use of alcohol.

Alcohol lowers resilience, detrimentally changing the way that we are able to respond to life events, stressors and overwhelming experiences, essentially making us more fragile and brittle.

Can Alcohol Increase the Symptoms of Anxiety for Those Who Suffer From Anxiety Disorders?

Yes.

Alcohol worsens the symptoms experienced by those qualifying for a diagnosis of anxiety disorder. This is true across the board, with all kinds of anxiety disorders. There is no kind of anxiety which is not negatively interfered with by alcohol use. This is because anxiety is intimately related to the pathways in the brain and body which are also affected by alcohol use and addiction.

The parts of the body that generate the experience of anxiety, as well as anxiety’s resolution (peace, or relaxation after over-activation), are impaired and damaged, sometimes permanently, by alcohol.

Alcohol also depletes the body’s natural store of beneficial hormones and neurotransmitters. We need these molecules to serve as chemical messengers in the body, to signal our muscles and other body systems to create sensations of peace and ease.

When alcohol is used chronically or in excess, the whole body system gets out of whack and we lose our ability to regulate and recover good moods and feelings on our own, even when we are engaging in positive and life affirming activities like exercise and connective relationships.

Although these positive behaviors normally would cause the body to reward us with a cascade of sensations of peace and pleasure, alcohol robs us of this option.

Why Might People Experience Anxiety After Drinking?

Anxiety is a symptom of alcohol withdrawal. The body will send a person into a state of acute anxiety when the substance is exiting the body and is no longer available for its sedative purpose. Due to the phenomenon of tolerance, the amount of alcohol required for staying out of withdrawal becomes higher and higher, so the anxiety associated with withdrawal becomes a more and more common experience.

How Do Alcohol and Anxiety Disorders Co-occur?

Many people get roped into alcoholism because of pre-existing anxiety conditions which feels unbearable to manage. Anxiety is almost always associated with traumatic experiences of greater or lesser impact which are held onto by the body and which could be treated with trauma work if not for the interfering presence of alcoholism.

For women this is especially so, as women are at greater risk of developing pathological anxiety as well as for that anxiety to be a result of a greater or lesser case of post-traumatic stress. In the absence of effective coping tools for shifting out of severe anxiety that is the residue of trauma in the nervous system, women with clinical levels of anxiety very often will develop alcoholism or another substance addiction, such as to benzodiazepines like Klonopin or Valium, because of their sedative effects.

Villa Kali Ma Helps Women Struggling With Anxiety and Alcoholism

Villa Kali Ma has the mission to help women recover lives of meaning, joy and freedom, to restore fully and never again have to go back to the nightmarish experiences of addiction, trauma, and mental health disorders.

If you are concerned about anxiety and alcohol and how these may be negatively impacting yourself or a loved one, please reach out and inform yourself about the treatments and pathways to recovery that are available for people who have found themselves caught in the alcohol-anxiety trap. There is a solution to this heartbreaking problem, and Villa Kali Ma can lead you to it.

Categories
Therapy

How Writing Helps You Heal

There are many benefits of writing in general and when it comes to supporting your mental health. If you experience anxiety or depression, writing can be an empowering way to connect with those emotions in a neutral space where you feel empowered to move in ways you otherwise couldn’t. 

How does writing help with mental health?

One way you’ll benefit and heal when you write for mental health is the chance to ask yourself questions you otherwise may struggle to explore. Writing is a chance to figure out who you are in the most vulnerable sense. Whether you’re using your writing practice as a coping mechanism or a creative outlet in a stagnant world, there are many ways to benefit from writing. 

Many types of writing can be therapeutic

The most excellent benefit of writing is that you can’t go about it the wrong way. There are so many ways to use words and writing to help you figure out who you really are at the heart of you. While there are many more types of writing, let’s explore a few of the most popular types of writing for mental health. 

Reflective writing 

Hindsight is 20/20, and reflective writing offers it to us in spades. You’ll use words and perspective to help you move through your experiences and feelings to process them in new ways. 

Writing reflectively may take the form of a daily journal practice or using a diary. Often, the distance from the event and a chance to revisit them without judgment is key in identifying the lessons we want to carry and what we can set down so that it doesn’t linger. 

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” 

— Anais Nin

Habit tracking

More like court reporting than journeying through your emotions, writing down the habits and goals you keep can be an empowering tool. This form of writing is a regular practice in which you annotate the things you’re regularly doing to support your mental health. 

Instead of a checklist, you’ll use brief notes to keep track of what you’ve done, how you went about it, and (if you’re feeling it) what the experience was like for you. Habit tracking is particularly useful for accessing the healing of writing if other methods haven’t worked well for you. 

Fiction storytelling

Taking space from the reality of your life to explore the wonder of imagination and possibility is an excellent way to access healing. When processing trauma, creating a story in which you retain complete control over the events and outcomes can be a powerfully positive experience. 

Using storytelling formulas, you can craft the story you want for any purpose you need. Whether you’d like to explore an alternate life experience or process something painful, creative writing is accessible and imaginative. Bonus: you can’t get it wrong when you’re the architect of the entire experience! 

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 

― Maya Angelou

Poetry and songwriting 

Some of the most memorable poems are byproducts of the writer’s healing. The formulaic but versatile formats available in prose are particularly alluring to some writers. Writing for poetic or instrumental value can double the impact of your writing as you begin to play with the lyrical shape of sound alongside it. 

Poetry and songwriting hold unique healing value in the ways they invite a challenge for you to make a big impact through the shape of your thoughts and the use of words. Whether you put them to music or not, song lyrics can be similarly powerful in how they engage you with meaning as you intentionally fit words and thoughts together. 

Following prompts 

When you dip your toes into a sea of experiences, it’s easy to feel caught up in their current as they pull you in more deeply. Prompt writing can be an excellent way to engage with your own thoughts without getting caught in a riptide. 

You can use prompts that start a sentence like “I was walking along the beach when…” or you can use experiential prompts that ask you to recall something through the prompt (ie- “When I last felt excitement,…”). Prompt or exercise-based writing releases the pressure of finding direction without inhibiting the flow of your thoughts once you get moving. 

Let your words lead you

Writing is a journey unlike any other. Regardless of the form you choose or the practice you establish, writing will be a steadfast friend to you. It is a versatile and patient space to which you can return any time you need to take a breath from the world and ground yourself in words. 

Be here; write now. 

“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.”

— Ayn Rand

For writers in recovery or seeking support for substance abuse, Villa Kali Ma is here to support you. 

Categories
Addiction Treatment

Starting Life in Recovery: 5 Tips For Your New Beginning

We’ve all got something we want to change. Is it a new life in recovery or just a new hobby? No matter the size of your fresh start, it might feel a little intimidating to begin. 

Why are new beginnings so important?

Life is constantly building, doing, feeling, and being. Throughout our lifetimes, we may lead many lives. Each of them will ask us to start something new. Whether it’s a task, a role or an entirely different way of being as you begin life in recovery, new beginnings are critical to our growth. They can also be scary and feel like a difficult undertaking.

Let’s share a few tips together to prepare yourself for the first steps of your new beginning.

5 versatile tips for your new beginning 

Instead of simple tips or certain help, consider the power of these five tips to create possibilities for your new beginning. Even in uncertainty for what the future holds, hope will bloom. Spend a moment absorbing these prompts and take what you need to support your next move. 

1. Find words to live by. 

Inspiring words take up little space yet leave a lasting imprint on your thoughts. The power of quotes is versatile. Words to live by can be a question, a challenge, or simply a reminder to yourself about the life you intend to build for yourself in recovery. You may find quotes or ideas in a beloved film or the pages of a novel. The words that put color in your world may come from inspiring figures the world over or loved ones close to your heart. 

The use of quotes and inspirational words is nearly limitless, so apply them liberally to your life. Try using quotes as journal prompts, affirmations, or milestone checkpoints in your daily life. 

2. Endings are always beginnings so feel both.

The bittersweet thing about beginnings is that they come from endings, and we aren’t always prepared to say goodbye.  Your life will always be a complicated tapestry of the threads that end and begin anew. Make space to honor the endings that made space for your beginnings. Adventure, experience, loss, relationships, and chance will carry you through their journeys before a new one begins. 

The complexity of both endings and beginnings in your life can also exist in your heart. Feeling a balance and inviting the pain alongside the excitement is not a failure or a step back. Meditation or other practices to spend time with acceptance and observation may help you move through the duality of new beginnings. 

3. Celebrate the messy parts of your life. 

Bob Ross’s painting show ran for more than a decade. In that time, the painter often shared the message that “mistakes are happy accidents.” While Bob was making happy little trees and cloudscapes, we’re thinking about how happy accidents can grow from things we never anticipated. Not every mess will become magic, but every difficult moment will have something to teach you- something you’ll be able to carry into your next canvas to create magic. You don’t have to sabotage a future life in recovery over a current crisis. Mistakes, messes, and setbacks don’t mean the end of a painting, and they won’t stop you from flourishing in life either. 

4. Fear is a feeling. 

Fear can exist in your emotional landscape without becoming the sole focus of the experience, and when trying something unfamiliar, it’s often necessary that it does. We all feel fear; it’s an unavoidable part of the human experience from which you may grow or learn. 

Though it may feel like an all-consuming presence, fear is just a state of being. It is an emotional experience you have. It is not a fact or reality that is unavoidable nor a larger-than-life entity that exists beyond your ability to navigate past it. Let your fear come, and let it go. We mustn’t grow attached to or detour around the fear we feel. It’s a part of a process. 

5. Make friends with mediocrity.

This may be the most difficult and important prompt on your journey. We cannot be good at everything we try, and that’s something to be grateful for. Practice sitting comfortably with the thought of being just okay at something. 

Find room for the practice of accepting (and if you’re ambitious, celebrating) mediocrity in some of your skills or experiences. You do not have to be great or even good at something for it to have a worthwhile benefit in this part of your story.

When applying these prompts to your life in recovery, listen to how they resonate. Look for the echo of intentional connection in your new beginnings and the habits that support you as you move toward it. Every prompt is a suggestion.

Daily practice makes perfect 

Find space in your life each day to incorporate these tips that you choose to carry with you. These building blocks will help you create habits you can use daily to make meaningful change in whatever ways you need it now. Even 5 minutes of intentional practice designed to support your success now and into the future can change your outlook- and your life. 

Call Villa Kali Ma today if you or a loved one is looking for new beginnings in sober living. 

Categories
Wellness

Benefits of Breathwork 

We are all breathing every second of the day, whether we are thinking about it or not. So what does it mean to do breathwork if breathing is an automatic process? 

Let’s explore the powerful benefits of breathwork and how it differs from other practices you may already know. 

What is the difference between meditation and breathwork?

The stereotypical picture of meditation is familiar to us: someone sits on the ground, eyes closed and palms upturned as they connect with blissful blankness. It looks like the embodiment of peace, and for many people, it can feel frustratingly unattainable. While this isn’t an entirely accurate picture of what meditation can truly be in your life, we don’t often have a mental picture for breathwork.

Breathwork isn’t a replacement or alternative to meditation but a practice entirely of its own. While meditation asks you for quiet focus, breathwork is entirely geared toward alternating the rhythm of your autonomic nervous system through the way you take in oxygen. Your breathing becomes the focus of your healing on every level- from the muscular action to the existential awareness- so that every breath you draw becomes the work you’re doing with your entire being.

Why is breathwork so powerful?

Breathwork is powerful because the air you breathe is a central component of powering your body and mind. You are shaped by the way you move through the world and the breath that moves through you as you do. Breathwork is powerful because you are powerful. 

Some of the benefits of breathwork are: 

  • Reduced levels of pain and increased ability to self-manage pain 
  • Better regulation of anxiety levels 
  • Getting more (and better) sleep 
  • Increasing the strength and health of your lungs
  • Faster cell regeneration 
  • Stronger immune system 
  • Improved trauma recovery (physical and mental) 
  • Increased circulation and more stable blood pressure 

There are many types of breathwork you can try

One of the most empowering reasons to consider breathwork for healing is the many ways to incorporate it into your life. Some types of breath work you may be familiar with already are square breathing, alternate nostril breathing, pranayama, or balanced breathing. There are practices for those just beginning, expert breath workers, and every stage in between. 

When you are beginning a breathwork practice as something new or an alternative to meditation, you can explore the types available based on what it is you’re looking for. Do you need support with anxiety or symptoms of trauma? Square breathing invites a 4-count breath at every step (inhale, pause, exhale, pause) and can help with that. Are you aiming for better control of your lung capacity and cell oxygenation? Diaphragmatic breathing engages your muscular strength in supporting those functions. 

How often should I practice breathwork?

As with all practices you begin, the way you cultivate it should be responsive to your needs and the progress you hope to make through it. 

Breathwork is scientifically proven 

Your ability to intentionally regulate your breathing has many benefits, as we’ve explored, but science wants you to know that it really works. With improvements to health that range from strong immune systems to improved removal of toxins through your breath, there are various studies that support the powerful effects of breathwork for healing. 

Breathwork works for healing because it is healing at a scientific and spiritual level. You are drawing in air that will move stagnancy within your body and introduce new possibilities as you remove the things that no longer serve you. For some people, that will be at a cellular physical level as toxins are removed. Others may find that the science of breath healing is more existential magic. 

The benefits you experience will be unique 

Your experience of breathwork will be just as unique as you are. While there is a vast possibility of benefits and life changes you may see, how breathwork impacts you will be a unique journey that you get to take. Every new change, benefit and development will be an exciting achievement to uncover along your path toward healing. 

How do I get started?

Whether you’re beginning as an alternative to meditation or in addition to other healing practices in your life, getting started with breath work is simple. You do not need a class, a guide or to be taught. There are types of breathwork you can do right here and now. Alternatively, there are amazing resources to inspire your breathwork practice across the internet, in holistic studios and communities across the country. 

Whether you choose to create a community breathwork practice or you strike out in a solitary space of internal healing, you have undoubtedly stumbled on a new space to breathe deep. 

Inhale, my friend, and prepare to exhale into new possibilities. 

If you or someone you know is ready to overcome substance addiction or is looking for a more holistic approach to recovery, Villa Kali Ma welcomes you. 

Categories
Wellness

Finding Quiet Joy: 6 Secrets to Unlock the Soft Pleasures in Your Life

What if I told you that the power of observation may be the secret you’ve been looking for to unlock the magic in your world? Through the profound and already-present quiet joy in your life, it could be! But what is quiet joy, and how can you find it?

What counts as “quiet joy”? 

We already know that small things can have a big impact. Put simply, quiet joy is anything that is easily overlooked or often considered unimportant. Quiet joy is not about the big things or the active parts of our lives. It’s a passive observation of the things you’re already experiencing through your daily routine or the life that’s happening now. 

You are worthy of soft pleasures in life and quiet joy, and you are already rich in the experiences that provide them. To help you make the most of that, we’ve gathered our six favorite tips for harnessing the power of observation without creating more obligation. 

Our life-changing tips to find quiet joy every day 

1. Fit gratitude into new spaces. 

There are so many beautiful practices that center around gratitude in our lives, but when is the last time you scaled it down into the micro-moments of your day? Gratitude journaling is great, but what about gratitude notetaking, mood boarding or photography? Consider a practice that you can fit into any moment through the use of your phone, a journal or something else that you’ve always got at the tip of your fingers. You can use an app designed for it like Pinterest, or just the Notes app or photo albums on your phone to collect observations of gratitude you experience as you move through your daily life. 

2. Let your intuition lead you toward magic. 

You know, deep down, what helps you to see the wonder that exists in the world. Recognizing the implicit magic in the things that happen in your life is a skill you already have. Through conditioning, that skill becomes suppressed- you begin to recognize the magic in the expensive, novel or hallmark moments in life instead of all the places they reside. You may feel silly or a little bit ashamed by the joy of a sunset or the smell of a new book, but you shouldn’t! Trust those moments when you feel excited or enamoured by the ordinary moments in your life. Your intuition is showing you the everyday places the extraordinary is already present. 

3. Re-write your self-talk about value. 

You are not only valuable when you are performing to the expectations of yourself and others. Try practicing self-talk that’s observational for the magic that already exists in you. When you feel tempted to criticize yourself for a thought or feeling, try observing it. Instead of “I never get things right the first time”, you can try observing that you need a learning moment. Now you’ve made use of an experience that felt frustrating and the power of your observation can become a part of the narrative you have about yourself instead of just criticism.

4. Notice the mundane with intention. 

The power of the extraordinary still exists in our everyday lives, but we stop noticing it as a product of our constant activity. Each day, try narrating a different mundane part of your day to yourself. This may feel silly at first but you can harness some of the magic you’ve forgotten to feel simply by noticing it. So today when you make your afternoon snack or you wash your face tonight, narrate the process to yourself and observe all the actions, small and simple, that are contributing to the ways you experience care in your life. 

5. Choose one way to connect with your body every day. 

Whether you’re spending a few minutes in meditation or choosing a more hands-on approach like exercise or orgasms, return to the power of your physical presence for a few minutes each day. Doing one activity every day that makes you feel empowered in your body creates joy in a multitude of ways. When you stop thinking about the way you think about your body, you can feel about it instead. Take a moment to feel your body however is best for you and soak up the joy that brings you. 

6. Create something. 

Creation is one of the most empowering yet overlooked soft pleasures in life. Did you make yourself lunch? You created that meal- from the idea of it to the sustenance it’s provided to your body. Have you worked with your hands lately? That’s creating, whether you knitted a sweater or rearranged your spice cabinet. Creativity is an expansive part of our lives and, when we marvel at the magic we can create (see what we did there?), your creative power unfolds before you.

The extraordinary power of your intuition is on your side 

The soft pleasures are “a great pleasure in waiting”.  You already recognize the power of pleasure and of the experiences of life. Through intuition and excitement, quiet joy exists in your life and is available to you through the energy you expend already. It costs nothing extra in time or effort when you tune into your intuition. The challenge in recognizing and accessing quiet joy is to sit with them and turn your observation toward the everyday experience of living. When you do, you will find the pleasure they bring has been there for you all along. 

If you or someone you know is ready to unlock quiet joy in substance abuse recovery and beyond, Villa Kali Ma has a variety of programs available now. Get in touch today. 

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